Rizoh: Social Media & the 2008 Presidential Election

The following post is by guest blogger Henry Adaso:

Turn on any major news network and you'll hear pundits punting on and on about how this presidential election season attracted more new voters than ever. One aspect that doesn't get enough coverage in the news, though, is the unprecedented influence of social media sites like Myspace, Facebook, and YouTube, on youth participation.

As we head into the general election cycle this fall, Americans can rest assured that the next President, no matter who comes out with the upper hand, will be someone who appreciates - to some degree, at least - the use of technology. Here's a breakdown of how each of the 3 major candidates pimped their White House bid with social media.

Hillary Clinton
Myspace - 197,186 friends; Facebook - 159,103 supporters

Clinton's campaign utilized all the major social media sites like YouTube, Myspace, and even Twitter, as a way to actively engage her audience from the jumpoff. But that’s where their efforts stalled. There’s nothing wrong with the strategy of establishing a presence with the top sites. Well, unless you consider the reality that some of those social media users you’re targeting might have migrated elsewhere.

Having millions of online friends has its perks, too. Clinton was able to raise $2.5 million shortly after she asked people to go to her website and make small donations following her victory in Pennsylvania.

Barack Obama
Myspace - 385,107 friends; Facebook - 891,679 supporters

Obama's campaign was probably the first to take full advantage of social networking throughout the campaign. The move, among other factors, helped him raise a significant amount of money from supporters online. Rather than limit their strategy to the top social networking sites, they established a presence with almost every social network in existence, including AsianAve and MyBatanga. They also utilized Central Desktop, a wiki-based collaboration tool, to organize precinct captains during the second half of the primaries.

Needless to say, Obama’s overwhelming popularity on Facebook, which targets college students, helped him woo the oh-so elusive college-age electorate. (Rudy Giuliani’s daughter even joined the Obama Facebook group at some point.)

John McCain
Facebook - 136,446 supporters; MySpace - 53,396 friends

McCain's camp promoted the use of social media early on in his campaign. They launched his McCain Space and added a version of the social media app to his official website. Of course, they had blogs, but they went a step further and allowed the readers to vote on blog posts. McCain’s camp also offers specific talking points to supporters through his blog, almost on a daily basis.

The whole idea is to get people to copy and paste those talking points in the comment section of popular political blogs like Daily KOs and Redstate. The blog is not called "Spread the Word" for no reason.

Social networking not only impacted fund raising and online advertising in this year’s primaries, it also revolutionized the role of traditional media to an extent. Remember those YouTube debates? You can debate climate change and health care all you want, but you can't argue that our presidential candidates failed to embrace web 2.0.

Who knows, maybe the next president will be twittering us about the YouTube video of his presidential address come 2009.

See The Rap Up for more Rizoh-esque insights.

Comments

[Tyrone Pipkin]

This is a great post about the positive impact popular social media sites are having on the presidential election.